Laid Bare
by Pheather McKelle
Summary: Private detective and cyborg Elizabeth Denton is called in to use her psychic powers in an attempt to interrogate the God of Lies shortly after the events of New York. [Rated T for language; possible expansion, Elizabeth is a character of my own creation who appeared several times in private RPs of mine with friends and will hopefully appear again in future stories :)]


**Interrogation**

**A Oneshot Avengers Fanfiction**

**by Pheather McKelle**

_I do not own the Avengers or their characters, I'm just a girl with a dream. :3_

**Edited: 3-31-14**

The room was dark and dimly lit, with only a flickering fluorescent bulb that hung from a slightly frayed wire that extended into the ceiling. In the center of the stained and crumbling concrete floor was a rickety folding table and two uncomfortable-looking metal chairs, tarnished and somewhat rusty. On one wall was a large expanse of opaque glass, reflecting the drab interior, and in the upper right corner perched a security camera, a steady beam of red light indicating it was turned on. The lens mechanisms whirred as they zoomed in on the table.

A metal door opened and in walked a tall, dark figure, with long black hair tending to curl, wearing a shabby green tunic and black pants cut in a foreign style, with metal rivets on the collar and loose lapels and interlinking scales on the outer thighs and calves. His sharply-angled face and gaunt eyes gave him a feral, alien appearance. The only color that stood out on his pale gray face were his emerald-green eyes, blazing with a fury that had been boiling for hundreds of years. Every move that he made was executed with subtle grace, a way of going that suggested he contained endless amounts of anger and power, and he was one wrong word away from unleashing it. Though on the lean side, he seemed to fill the whole room, small as it was. He was a caged tiger, relentlessly pacing his enclosure, subtly yet no less severely mad. Despite the patched clothing and unhealthy palor, he retained a royally-composed form. He had certainly been a prince long enough to pick up on ways to carry himself in an intimidating way.

Closely following the man - in fact each grasping an arm - were two burly bodyguards in full-body armor. Their faces were stoic as they roughly deposited the man on one of the chairs opposite the mirror and shackled his arms and legs to it. The white light made his face look as though it was washed out and colorless, making him appear all the more insane. A faint smirk was etched on his thin gray lips and he seemed to stare right through the one-way glass. The agents on the other side fidgeted.

A short man with close-cropped dark brown hair entered the room next, carrying a thin file stuffed haphazardly with papers and clippings. He adjusted his glasses as he sat down and opened the file before him.

"You are Loki, yes?" he asked more to himself than the man, a clear warble of agitation in his voice. Loki grinned.

* * *

"If you guys can't get him to crack, I don't see how I can." Elizabeth protested, sipping her coffee on the other side of the glass, her clear blue eye peering through the class, scrutinizing his composed features. Her red eye whirred in its socket, dialating and contracting as it focused on minute details. It seemed independent of the natural blue one yet in perfect synch. The eye picked up nothing abnormal, except a complete contempt for humans and an uncanny ability to read faces. Only five minutes into the interrogation session had left the would-be interrogator crying incoherently on the ground.

"We called you in for a reason, Detective Denton. You're the only one we know that has psychic powers." Maria Hill said briskly, shoving the file at Elizabeth. Elizabeth smirked as if Agent Hill had said the punchline to an inside joke.

"And you want a third party to interrogate an alien war criminal? You must be truly desperate." she commented, flipping through the file absent-mindedly. Agent Hill sucked in her breath at the reference to Loki's first interrogation. Elizabeth glanced at Hill quickly, then back to the file, the smirk still playing on her lips. She skimmed through a few more seconds before she snapped it shut. "Okay, I'll talk to the him and see what I can get, on one condition: you do what I ask once I'm in there." Agent Hill raised an eyebrow but nodded hesitantly, ushering her into the hallway that separated them from the most notorious terrorist on earth.

Loki seemed mildly surprised at the tall, pale blonde, whose round cheekbones and elegant jawline were not enhanced in the least by the washed-out lighting in the room. He immediately noticed the small metal chip on her forehead, the blue sensor just beneath the skin; a red eye, and a peculiar _clunk_ as her right leg took a step. She strolled in as though she lived there, plopping his file on the desk and sitting down with a huff. Rolling up the right leg of her jeans, she exposed a metal contraption, filled with hidden gears and buzzing with electrical impulses and covered in shiny plates which suggested the contours of human muscle. Pulling a screwdriver out of the depths of her trench coat, she proceeded to tighten a loose bolt holding a plate encompassing more cogs and wires than Loki thought practical to put in a leg. He couldn't fathom how it functioned nor what it ran on, for it obviously wasn't hooked up to anything yet the overall theme was eighteen hundreds steam power.

"The ol' bionic leg is getting twitchy. She'll have to be repaired soon." Elizabeth smiled tightly as she tucked the screwdriver away and rolled her pant leg down. Loki raised an eyebrow but didn't comment, his self-satisfied smirk still faintly lingering on his lips. "My name is Detective Elizabeth Denton, cyborg extraordinaire." she said with a french flourish on the last word. "And you're Loki of Asgard, I presume?" she asked, interlocking her fingers in front of her on the table.

"I have no affiliation with Asgard." Loki said cooly, leaning back in his chair, still cocky from the last attempt at wresting answers from the God of Lies.

"Okay then… Loki Odinson?" Elizabeth tried again, a somewhat playful lilt to her words. Loki scowled.

"That one is worse."

"Then who are you?" she asked, her tone abruptly harder. Loki glared at her, pursing his lips together, all trace of fooling around gone.

"Just Loki will be fine." he growled, turning his head to the side. The corner of Elizabeth's mouth quirked in a slight smile. She slid the file closer to her and ignored the exiled god's pointed glares as she thumbed through several articles on the ruins of New York as well as some documents describing in detail all the various deaths he had caused first-hand.

"You're brother to Thor? The king of Asgard?" Elizabeth pressed on, tone neutral, ignoring the murderous glares she received. He remained mute. After five minutes of breathing which sounded heavier in the strained silence, she rolled her eyes and turned towards the one-way glass. "Turn them off." she said. After a slight pause, the red light that signaled the function of the security camera blinked off. Elizabeth sighed and faced Loki once again. "This isn't being recorded." he stared at her, trying to judge her motives, then laughed shortly.

"You think you can get answers out of me? The God of Lies?" he hissed. "You forget who you are dealing with. You are woefully inadequate compared to me."

"Says the god who was beaten by a giant green human." Elizabeth retorted, still cool in the face of death. A flash of memory crossed his eyes for a moment before he composed himself.

"He is no brother of mine, and certainly no king." he hissed quietly, the last words seemed to be laced with such malice that acid seemed to dribble from his tongue. "That oaf would make a better sword-bearer than a ruler of the Nine Realms." he added with venom, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his chair's armrests. Oblivious to the reaction she caused, or choosing to ignore it, Elizabeth slid a lone sheet of paper towards the angry god.

"Says here you tried to rule Midgard. Why?" The paper described all of Loki's actions that SHIELD knew about; that is to say, all that had happened on Earth so far. Loki's hatred dissipated with a malevolent grin and he leaned forward.

"If I cannot be king by birth, I can by force. I was always meant to rule, and you were always meant to be ruled." His voice, even to Elizabeth, was charming, smooth, and at a subconscious level made her want to bow to his every whim. But she detected something different below the sonorous deep cords of his reverberating voice, and it was a quality she had heard only once before, while on a case dealing with a serial killer who murdered those who caused him harm in his youth. It was etched with sadness and longing, shot through with undertones of a maniac and peppered with insanity. It was a quality that Elizabeth hoped to never hear again, and once she did, she knew she was standing in some deep shit. This man knew what he was doing, and he was doing it well. She knew it was mostly luck that his plans failed in the first place. He was not one to be crossed.

"Did you ever think there was a reason Odin didn't want you to rule?" she asked, crossing her bionic leg over her real one and folding her hands in her lap.

"Because he always favored Thor over me. Thor was always special, always given the extra attention." Loki scoffed. Elizabeth leaned back, allowing him to continue with a lazy, one-handed gesture. Loki rolled his eyes. "If you think for a second that I'm going to dissolve into a puddle of tears like that pathetic mortal before you just because my family dynamic wasn't the most functional, you won't get anything else out of me." he growled, instantly closing off again. "You cannot lay be bare."

"I never said I want a teary confession, I just want to get this job done so I can go home and feed my cat." Elizabeth smirked, leaning forward. "So tell me what I want or I'll force it out of you." Loki laughed.

"You really think you can force information out of me? I am a god! The God of Lies no less." he added with a hint of pride. Elizabeth rolled her eyes, thoroughly sick of the brand he had given himself. She folded her arms on the table and leaned foreword, gazing at him with such intensity that Loki couldn't help but stare back.

"Let's see." she said in mock concentration. "Let's start with the daddy issues. Ever since you were little, it's only been your mother, hasn't it?" Elizabeth didn't think it was possible, but Loki's face got paler. A knowing grin crept into Elizabeth's features. "Shall we do this the easy way or the hard way?" she repeated. Loki swallowed but made no comment. "Very well then, the hard way it is." Elizabeth stood and circled the table. Without so much as a second to react, she spun Loki's chair around with her bionic foot and pushed it so it leaned precariously against the back of the table, keeping it steady with one hand while the other yanked his chin up and held it in an iron grip. She stared into his green eyes with her red and blue ones, the maroon iris turning and dilating. Despite the feeling that he was about to fall, Loki couldn't move. Even if he wanted to, the cuffs on his ankles and wrists prevented it. After a minute, Elizabeth closed her eyes, let go of his chin and abruptly spun his chair back around. Sitting back down at her seat, she took a deep breath, the sheen of sweat that had accumulated on her brow wiped away with the heel of her hand.

"Well, it seems as though the daddy issues aren't the only thing that's plaguing your mind, Laufeyson." she said at last, folding her hands in her lap. Loki worked his jaw, glaring at her with a vengeful stare that could burn through metal. "Wow, where to begin? Your whole life has been overshadowed by your brother, who you allowed to lead every adventure without question because he was stronger and better-looking and popular." Loki's lips curled in a snarl of rage. His hands clenched and shook. Elizabeth pressed on.

"No one really loved you except your mother and brother and possibly your father; they were all too scared of your powers. In the beginning, you tried to do good deeds with them, but your little acts of mischief were far more powerful in capturing the people's attention. So you secluded yourself to your room, am I correct?" His lips pressed in a thin line. "After that, you thought your only chance was gaining the throne, and you thought you would have it, since in your opinion Thor was a bumbling idiot and could no more rule the nine realms than hold a conversation about anything not to do with battle. Shall I go on?" Rage seemed to roll off the man's form in waves, and Elizabeth was privately surprised she didn't incinerate. "But you didn't get the throne. Thor did. Even after all his stupid adventures, he still got the throne. At first, you thought it was just because he was older. Later you found out it was because you were adopted; the son of a frost giant no less. And not just any giant: the king. The one who waged war on the Midgardians, who led some of the most bloodthirsty battles in history, and whose race was on the brink of extinction, at least until you set the bifrost on them." Elizabeth paused for a breath. "And so, when your plans are crashing around you, the realization of failure creeps in, and all seems lost, why not let go?" her voice had gone softer; lost the hard edge that she had acquired with her cocky attitude. In her bearing was the message, plain as day: we've all been there.

"Of course it was only after, you found the chitauri, struck up a bargain, and found another chance to rule. To prove to Odin you were a king. In your eyes, we are no more then ants. And you, the boot." her confidence had returned. "Either way, you killed a shit-ton of people, and since I doubt you will feel any remorse any time soon, you'll be staying a nice long while in prison, where the remainder of your semi-immortal life will be spent in the agony of constant anger and punishment that will only serve to make you even more bat-shit crazy then you already are." towards the end, her good eye started to water, and her voice wavered at the last words. Elizabeth quickly brushed a tear away before Loki could spy it, but his eyes were averted and in their depths also lay the sting of tears not shed.

"Thank you for your cooperation." Elizabeth concluded with a smile, scooping up the file and standing from her chair, her bionic leg making a dull clunk each time it hit the concrete as she made her way to the door.

"I didn't do it for him." Loki said quietly. Elizabeth turned around.

"What?" she asked.

"I didn't do it for him." he repeated, voice hoarse, looking up into her eyes with a blank expression. If she looked close enough, she saw a tumult of emotions: sorrow, pity, anger, remorse? Who could tell. She nodded, opening the door and closing it behind her.

"Well, did you find out his motives? How he got the army? Anything?" the supervisor demanded. Elizabeth smirked lopsidedly and shoved the file in his chest.

"And a great deal more!" She added as she sauntered away, not bothering to look back at the exasperated look on his face.

"Working with Denton is…" Agent Hill began, searching for the right word.

"Difficult." Nick Fury grumbled, seizing the file and stalking after her.

**Thanks for reading, please favorite/review!**


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